


Call It A Feeling

by InTroubleWithTheKing



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 12:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20447339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTroubleWithTheKing/pseuds/InTroubleWithTheKing
Summary: A response to the episode "Monday (6x14)". Mulder and Scully attempt to navigate the outrageous events of the day.





	Call It A Feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greekowl87](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekowl87/gifts).

> This is written for Kelly (greekowl87) as part of the 2019 X-Files fanfiction exchange. My prompt was to write a response to the episode Monday (6x14). This is the first fanfic I’ve written in 15 years. There’s something so romantic about writing a story for a complete stranger and I absolutely love it.
> 
> This initial draft is being posted here and will be moved to An Archive of Our Own as soon as my membership goes through. For now, I’m posting here so I can make the deadline.
> 
> This is dedicated to Keva and Aiden.

8:30 pm - Monday Night  
Dive Bar in Washington D.C.

“…this next round is on me.”

It was a dark and stormy night.

So, we begin with an awfully familiar cliché that nevertheless feels like an appropriate end for this awfully familiar day. Scully is at the bar ordering drinks, which she insists are on her. I, on the other hand, am still trying to wrap my head around the events of the day. Not so much the robbery, the stick-up, and the suicide bomb, but the familiarity of it all… how it had all happened before, like some sick twisted cycle of reincarnation where Nirvana is never possible. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling. Kind of like the feeling I have now…

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.

Mulder’s thoughts are consumed by a strange man tearing through the entrance to the bar. He’s short, stout and his red hair is balding from the back. He wears a white t-shirt that’s so drenched in the evening's rain that his hairy chest is visible. As he approaches the bar, he kicks a stool over and slams his hands down on the old wood, sending reverberations to the other side of the room. 

“Let me at that bitch, I swear to God someone is going to die tonight. Where is she? Where the fuck is she? She did this…”

He reaches into his pocket but is startled by Scully, inching up behind him. 

I’m so not in the mood for…

“Sir…” I need you to calm down right now. 

“She did this?” The man points to the bartender, who by this point had quickly made her way out from behind the bar and was headed towards a door that leads to stairs, a safe haven from this room.

“You need to stop right…”

He is now hyperventilating and grabbing his chest. Keeping his right hand on his heart, he extends his left hand to reveal what appears to be track marks up his arm. He gestures at the bartender. 

“She sent her space ships to get me… She sent them… and they did this to me.”

Scully shakes her head disapprovingly at this bad trip as she is definitely not in the mood to do emotional labor for any more unstable men chasing space ships. She falls into a familiar autopilot.

“Sir…” she calls out to him. The man is intercepted by two security guards who drag him back out the front door with a fight.

Mulder and Scully lock eyes and she mouths “bad trip” as he is escorted out. 

Monday’s are a bad trip – especially this one.

Mulder nods his head. The bartender reemerges and is watching all of the drama play out from a shadowy corner before reapproaching the bar.

“Just another shitty night in this shitty place,” she mutters. "So what will it be?" 

Mulder approaches and sits on the stool by the table across from where she is standing.

“Do you know that man?”

The bartender, a woman of about 25 with dark hair tied back in a messy bun, shrugs.

“Yeah. I know him.” She pulls two glasses off a clean stack. “That’s my ex-husband. He gets like that from time to time.” She walks away.

Fuck…

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.

There is an unidentified crash outside – the sound of glass breaking and the man is back inside. 

“Is that motherfucker back? I swear to God – someone is about to die tonight,” the bartender yells, this time picking up a wine bottle, about to hurl it at his head.

“Hey…”

Scully places herself in between the bartender and the man, as he is grabbed and dragged out the door a second time. They take in a collective breath. 

Maybe we should go somewhere else. Maybe we should go home.

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.

“Maybe we should do somewhere else?” Scully says. 

It's more of a command than a suggestion.

“I was just thinking the same thing…”

“No…” The bartender interjects. “Stay. This round is on me…” She pours two whiskeys and hands them to Scully.

Scully sighs. “Well, today has been eventful.”

“What do you mean by that?” Mulder replies.

“Uh… like, a bank robbery, a thwarted suicide bombing, a handgun… I dunno, Mulder. It was a tad bit out of the ordinary… even for…”

“Is that all?” he cuts her off.

They stare at each other. Silence. By now several new men in suits have entered the bar and the energy slowly starts to shift for the better. One of the men approaches the old jukebox in the corner and desperately tries to make it work. 

“… is that all you remember?”

He sees that she's thinking about what to say, how to frame her words correctly.

“I think you know.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I think you know…”

“I know?”

“What do you know?”

“What do I know?”

“Know.”

“No?”

“Stop. What do you remember?” She spits out quickly under her breath.

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.

“…There was a leak, and my phone broke, and I was late to work. My rent was overdue and when I arrived at work I had missed half the meeting… so you covered for me per usual and I went to the bank and there was a robbery. And somehow you showed up and then I was shot and died in your arms…”

Scully looks at him quizzically and purses her lips.

“I meant about the space ship… what that unstable man was talking about when he came storming up in here? I thought for sure you’d have something to prod,” she interrupts herself as Mulder is taken aback. "I'm joking. It’s Monday, Mulder… and there were some… extenuating circumstances, which quite frankly you owe an explanation for...” 

“Did Skinner put you up to this? I suppose I’ll have to answer to him at some point..."

“But before that, you have to answer to me. I know you know more than you’re leading on. How did you know about the bomber at the bank? What did you mean when you said every day you die in here and every day we are forced to repeat it? I keep seeing images of things in my mind… images from today that somehow my mind has interpreted as memories, but in reality, they are of events that never happened so they aren’t true memories," Scully sighs. "But our memories are just replications of how we remember an event that change over time... images of those images..." 

“Images. From today?" 

“Um… the meeting, the girl, the bomb, the gun… and some snapshots of things that didn't happen, which are always the hardest to forget.”

“It happened.”

“How..." 

“Call it a feeling…”

The energy in the space shifts. The men who were trying to get the jukebox to work failed and are moving onto another bar. Something feels off, but neither of them can put their fingers on it, so they ignore it, tossing it up to a "case of the Mondays."

“Want to get out of here?” Scully asks. 

"Not yet." Mulder shrugs. “I never cared for Monday. For as long as I can remember, Mondays have been difficult for me. I know, I know…Mondays are a social construct. What I really am struggling with is Capitalism, and not Monday, per se. You can save it. Call it a feeling… but I think we’ve been here before. You. Me.… us.”

“Us?” 

She curiously sips her drink.

“Yeah. I mean, what if I make the wrong decision right now. What if the correct decision is to go back to your place with you? What if we get so drunk we end up having a wild affair and I knock you up and you carry the child to term and have the baby and that baby ends up being the one who stops alien colonization, but by not going back to your place I am robbing the world of this and therefore putting us on a path to an apocalypse, so I am forced to relive this moment again and again until I finally decide to go back to your place because that is how this story is how fate says it should be.”

Scully averts her eyes.

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.

“Woooooow...” She takes in a deep breath. “Call it a feeling but I would say you are drunk. But since you’ve barely touched your drink, I can’t blame this on intoxication… First of all, your argument is the same one that anti-choice activists use to deny women bodily autonomy. Second, there is nothing to prove that we are not in control of our own destinies… the best we have to go by is social construction.”

“But there’s nothing to prove that we are in control either…”

“If you want to go into metaphysics… Buddhists and Hindus believe that when you achieve Nirvana you are liberated from the cycle of rebirth and the accumulation of bad karma. Until then, you spend your life, and the preceding lives working off the bad karma. Within the Judeo-Christian belief system, well, the general idea is God is in control...”

“What if you don’t subscribe to any of that?”

“Then I guess you’re in control of your own destiny, Mulder.”

“So, is it safe to say that today we broke our bad cycle and are one step closer to Nirvana?”

“I suppose that is still yet to be determined. This next round is on me.”

Scully stands to get the bartender’s attention. Mulder’s thoughts are consumed by a strange man tearing through the entrance to the bar. He’s short, stout and his red hair is balding from the back. He wears a white t-shirt that’s so drenched in the evening's rain that his hairy chest is visible. As he approaches the bar, he kicks a stool over and slams his hands down on the old wood, sending reverberations to the other side of the room. 

“Let me at that bitch, I swear to God someone is going to die tonight. Where is she? Where the fuck is she? She did this…”

He pulls out a gun and aims it at Mulder.

Three shots are fired.

It was a dark and stormy night.

So, we end with an awful (and familiar) cliché that nevertheless feels like an appropriate end for this awful (and familiar day).

She’s at the bar ordering drinks, which she insists are “on her”. I, on the other hand, and still trying to wrap my head around the events of the day. Not so much the robbery, the stickup, and the suicide bomb, but the familiarity of it all… like I knew it was going to happen, no, more like… it had all happened before. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling. Kind of like the feeling I have now…

The leak

The broken phone.

The alarm.

The rent.

The meeting.

The girl.

The bomb.

The gun.

Black.

Repeat.


End file.
